


Strangers With Chrysiridia

by GutsAllegoryRam



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Depression, F/M, Partying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-09-21 14:32:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9552920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GutsAllegoryRam/pseuds/GutsAllegoryRam
Summary: Set in Marinette and Adrien’s college years, this is an AU where Adrien attended high school at an all-boys private school with Nino, while Marinette and Alya attended public school. As such, Ladybug and Chat Noir have worked together for years, but never even known each other out of costume, let alone seen each other.





	1. It Starts with a Number

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, I haven't posted here in a long time. I'm going to try and weave together a few story ideas I've had in the past year or two, and build my confidence in finishing and publishing other projects I've had on deck for years.
> 
> This is pretty benign for now, so I'll keep the rating teen, but I think with later chapters it'll have to be bumped up to mature. We'll see.

“A party? For a  _ dork _ like you?” Ladybug giggled, flashing a mischievous grin her partner’s way. He winced at her words, a little hurt, but largely in jest. She nudged him encouragingly in the shoulder, eliciting a smile that she had come to treasure in their years together.

“Not for _ me _ ,” he corrected, “for my  _ friends _ .” He chuckled, adding nervously to the end, “I'd ah, I'd invite you, but Iknowyou’veneverbeenbigonusknowingwhotheotheris-”

Ladybug inhaled pensively; even if he hadn’t rushed to finish before she could speak, she knew this was broaching a sensitive topic.  “Well, Chat, it's funny you'd say that… I've actually been thinking about that lately-”

He perked up; eyes widening to hear words he'd always hoped to hear, but never thought would come.

Ladybug took a moment to check around, before leaning in, whispering cautiously in his ear. “I actually…” she cut short to grasp his shoulders firmly, an attempt to calm the beaming, vibrating-with-excitement Chat Noir, “I've thought carefully-” she spoke sternly, waiting for him to register the seriousness in her voice before continuing. “I don't think it's safe to keep our identities from one another anymore-”

Once again she interrupted herself, leering at Chat, who had gasped excitedly and made a cartoonish, mirthful clasp of his hand over his mouth. Again she squeezed his arms, this time digging her thumbs into the pits of his elbows.

“Ahck!” he exclaimed, pouting (yet again, his mannerisms struck her as cartoonlike- though he now at least seemed to register the gravity of the situation). “Sorry, sorry… Why the change, though? It's been this way for… god, years.”

Ladybug’s expression shifted from a scowl to an almost mournful frown, as she drew back and met his eyes with hers. “I don't… I…” again she took a breath to collect herself, as Chat leaned in, raising one of her hands to lay on his head. She cracked a weary, but appreciative smile, leaning in once more to whisper, “Lately, I've felt nervous… When was the last time we faced an akuma?”

Chat froze. He had to ponder this for a moment. It hadn’t been a year, but… “Wow, I can't believe I lost track of time…”

“Months, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I've been hoping it meant a disappearance of Hawk Moth-”

“Me too-”

“-but I don't think he'd give up so suddenly, and without a fight…”

“Do you think… do you think he's planning something?”

Ladybug paused. She had her hunches, but didn't want to embarrass herself. “I don't know, but in the meantime, I've been working on a… contingency plan of sorts. It… it's kind of a silly-”

“I’ve never known you to think of anything, let alone plan anything silly, m’lady. Tell me what you've been working on!”

“Well… I'm in university now. This past semester I've been taking an introductory class on psychology. Now I know I'm not an expert, and I'm looking for answers at the lowest levels of academia-”

Chat placed a hand to her shoulder, his grasp soft, warm and relaxed. “There's always something to learn. And you'd know it better than me, at least.”

“Th-Thanks.” She leaned into his hand a little, almost to the point of nuzzling before she stopped herself. “So... I've been looking for answers. I know Hawk Moth feeds on negative energy-”

“And maybe psychology could help us spot warning signs!”

“Right!”

“But… how could that help us if he tends to catch victims… anywhere?”

“I don't think it'll be a random victim next time…”

They both felt chills overwhelm them, as Chat pondered the stakes at hand. “I… Wow… That… I don't… I mean…”

Ladybug gulped. It was reassuring to know that Chat was in agreement with her, but a disheartening situation all the same.

“I… I think I need to sit down.”

“L-Look, I'm glad you see this like I do, but that's not a guarantee it'll happen! We just, we just have to remain vigilant, and positive! And I think as a precaution, we… we should...” Chat looked up, lucky to have already been seated, as his heart began to pound. “I think… we should exchange numbers.”

Chat’s heart sank. This was not the response he'd hoped for, the moment he'd played over in his head hundreds of times, in almost as many different ways. “Well,” he said, in a despondent-in-spite-of-himself tone, the inflection of a teenager being given figure skating tickets for his birthday when he'd asked, no, begged to see Jagged Stone on his _Life, Liberty & Ladybugs _tour, “that's… a start.”

Ladybug crouched beside him, once more leaning in to pet him, as the boy gave a dejected huff and looked aside. “Chat… you don't have to hide your disappointment. I know it's not what you expected, and certainly not what you'd hoped-”

“Just answer me one thing,” there was a pregnant pause as he chose his words. “Why now, and why just… numbers?” Ladybug flinched; the longing, the hurt in his voice felt like a suckerpunch. She changed the motions of her hand from a pet to a massage, her fingertips rubbing deep into his scalp, triggering a twitching, reluctant smirk in the corner of Chat Noir’s mouth which melted her heart.

“So, why keep in contact, and not reveal… our names?” she asked, her partner nodding in response, before craning his neck for more of the delightful rub. Ladybug was more than eager to oblige, giggling as she closed in and now used both her hands, to which Chat faked his best purr. “ahahah! I just think… well, we should be cautious, above all. Let's start with phone numbers, because, if I'm being truthful, I wouldn't mind being able to message you anytime, inconspicuously…” she trailed off, yet again silenced by Chat, but this time by a look of sheer astonishment. He regarded her so tenderly, so gratified, it made her want to cry.

Again Chat paused before he spoke, “You mean it?”

She could bear it no longer, and finally closed the gap in a tight hug, sniffling into his shoulder, rubbing her face in the side of his neck. “I don't say things I don't mean-” she croaked, and thought she could hear Chat sniffling a bit himself, and felt him raise a hand to dab his eyes.

There was no imminent danger. This patrol had gone the same as at least the last dozen or so, which was to say, it hadn't. No sightings of akumas, still no indication of Hawk Moth’s whereabouts, just the pair left to contemplate what they were doing and why.

They were hugging.

Had they ever done this for more than a couple seconds? Even their roughest, scariest bouts with akumas hadn't ended like this, and yet neither had any desire to break this hug. Chat was, surprisingly, the one to break the hug.

“That was nice… thank you, m’lady,” he said with a relaxed, grateful smile.

“Thank you as well,” Ladybug replied, beaming back.

“So, my number? But not my name? How will this work?”

Ladybug nodded, as she rose slowly to her feet. “Right, ground rules. Cell phones can be tracked, and Hawk Moth, I'm sure you realize, is a real person beneath his mask, just like us… I don't want to assume anything crazy, but-”

“SMS messages can be tracked. We should assume he can see ours.”

“Precisely. Don't use any names, ever. I mean people, places, even a model car your parents drive.”

Chat smiled impishly to himself, nodding. “Limousine” wouldn't exactly reveal himself, but it would certainly narrow things down.

“Even nicknames… well, we can probably come up with new ones. Oh, be careful what you enter my name as. Nothing even alluding to-”

“I've got it, I've got it.”

Ladybug frowned slightly, but continued. “We shouldn't give them to one another here. Let's head home, and exchange them through our communicators.” She gestured to her utility belt, and his staff.

“Sure thing. I… I won't lie, I wish I could invite you to my party, but for all the precautions we're taking, it'd throw things out the window…”

Ladybug smiled guiltily, looking aside, “Well, even if we knew each other, IIIIII… promised my best friend I'd go to one with her the same night.”

Chat swallowed nervously. He couldn't resist imagining…

“There's a guy she knows that she's been trying to set me up with for years. She's so crazy about us meeting, you'd think she's after  _ him _ .”

A void opened up, where a second ago had been the pit of Chat Noir's stomach. All he could do was nod and stare on.

Ladybug sighed, “honestly, it's my decision, I'm not going to just… you know, welcome this guy into my life like that. But A-” she caught herself, “my friend just… it's kind of her personality. Do you know what I mean?”

“I know exactly the type,” Chat said, hiding his disappointment well to think back to Nino’s girlfriend. It was crazy really, Ladybug had described exactly the pretenses of his own party. “My best friend's into music, he's been trying to line me up with girls for a while now. They're just…”

“Never good enough for the likes of Chat Noir, eh~”

He laughed, hIs spirits rebounding a little. “Hey, the first few, I'd ask if they could lasso me out of falling to my death, and the blank stares said it all.”

Ladybug laughed, a beautiful, hearty laugh. “I'm going to ask this guy if he's good with a baton-”

“Well I don't know how to use a baton, but I'm pretty good with pole dancing~”

Ladybug let into a dorky, snorting laugh, as Chat joined her as well. “Ok, ok, it's time we broke for the evening.”

“I look forward to talking with yo-” he gasped as she rushed into a joyful hug, and responded in kind with a loving squeeze.

“Thank you. For everything. I mean it.”

Chat held onto the hug a little longer than was necessary, but ultimately broke the hug to give a chivalrous salute, turned his back to her and rushed home.

Was he wrong to want to make a relationship finally happen between them? Was he wrong to be jealous of someone else waltzing into the picture, when they'd spent what already felt like a lifetime together?

He pushed these thoughts out of his mind, to ponder the nickname he'd use for her in his phone contacts. Nothing too obvious, nothing too sentimental, lest Nino or Alya catch sight of it and give him a whirlwind of grief. He thought back to the myriad of pet names he'd dreamed up over the years, some of which drew laughs, some of which drew cringes, and some he'd never worked up the courage to use in her presence.

He arrived home to see she had already sent over her number, and elected to save it under a name which would read sillily to others while remaining sentimental to him- “The Princess”.


	2. It continues with a Message

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marinette returns from her patrol to ponder the merits of life outside of Ladybug as she awaits Chat Noir's reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I need to apologize for taking so long to update. I struggle with completing projects, and this has ended up trickier than I first imagined, but I expect to be rewarding all the same. If you want to see what's keeping me from getting stuff done, and/or otherwise contact me, know that I'm on tumblr under https://gutsallegoryram.tumblr.com Let me know how I am doing for pacing of the story. I know I'm never going to set any records for word count.

Ladybug did not know (or really care for that matter) precisely what drove her to hug Chat Noir again, but she knew exactly what drove her to keep hugging him for so long- it was comforting beyond words.

She recalled meeting Chat at an age where their heights were relatively even, but the ensuing years saw him grow-as boys tend to do-at an expeditious rate she could not hope to match. At its worst, there had been that year or so when Chat Noir  _ towered  _ over Ladybug- it resulted in some of the most awkward photo op’s of their career, the akumatization of a professional basketball player while on holiday in France, and the formation of Chat’s first international fanclub (made up predominantly of “cougars”- a term which went most humiliatingly over the boy’s head for the first 8 months of its existence). In the end however, Ladybug's good luck manifested even in her genetics, as she inherited neither her father's gargantuan size, nor her mother's diminutive height, but a perfect in-between.

Perfect could only begin to describe the hug.

It started with a sharp, almost lunging motion as she rushed to grab him and received a squeeze back, but it settled into an embrace she'd cherish for weeks to come. They stood comfortably upright, allowing her to lean her head forward, at an angle just steep enough so as not to strain her neck. Her brow fit to his clavicle as if molded for it, cradled effortlessly in a broad, supportive shoulder. His arms drew around her with a touch that was firm, protective, something which allowed her to relax a bit, yet it seemed gentle and empathic at the same time, relaxing her even further. She pressed her body blissfully into his, which may not have been the best move, as Chat awkwardly broke the hug and bid his goodbyes.

Ladybug watched her partner disappear into the Parisian skyline, gnawing at her tongue in a pitiful attempt to keep from smiling, frowning, or conveying even the remotest form of emotion. She let pass a single wistful, humming sigh before reaching for her yo-yo, turning around, and swinging her way home. Their rendez-vous had wound up not all that far from her house; it was little more than 5 minutes before she was in her bedroom, sending Chat Noir her number and instructions:

_ 01 XX XX XX XX. I can’t stay in my suit so just message me there. Write “Made it home safe” so I know it’s you. _

She detransformed, looking down at her arms as the suit evaporated away in a pink flash. For a moment, she zoned out, her eyes unfocusing as she stood awkwardly in the center of her room. Her number. He had her number. Why didn’t it make her happy? She liked him well enough, she liked fighting crime with him, she certainly liked exchanging hugs with him, but what was it about giving him her phone number that left her feeling so anxious?

She took a seat on the side of her bed, back hunched as the rigors of the evening's patrol sank in- the suit protected her with ‘spots on’, but after the transformation released, hard blows and physical exhaustion began to slowly creep up on her in a dull ache. She studied her body with a sort of vacant desolation that lately she had found increasingly difficult to escape. The problem was not Chat Noir learning Marinette’s phone number; it was learning about Marinette herself.

She could never admit it to him, but her anonymity as Ladybug had come to be a hugely comforting part of her life. To Chat, there was no Marinette, only Ladybug. It was hard to tolerate his at-times obnoxious crush on her, but harder still to imagine a boy developing feelings for her outside of costume. Maybe he was a tramp, but Chat Noir's fixation on her alter-ego was just another part of what made being Ladybug an escape for her. As Ladybug, she felt like a completely different person, the object of Chat Noir’s doting affections, the darling of a city she guarded like her own child, the hero of young girls (and the occasional boy) throughout all of France. Of course she never would have had a chance to do those things without a miraculous, but… wouldn't anyone else as Ladybug have been capable of the same?

She flopped onto her back and gazed emptily up at the ceiling of her room. How had it come to this? Why did she regard life outside of being a superhero with such gloom, despair even? Just recently it had dawned on her how far she had come from, well, back when she was just Marinette: nothing more than a klutz, down on her luck, and without friends (for the most part). Did Tikki find her first, or was it Alya? The stress of learning her abilities and duties in the face of great danger had smattered her memories of the early days into a dreamlike blur. That first akuma they fought, Marinette (and really, she was _ Marinette _ fighting an akuma, not yet a Ladybug truly) was resistant to it all. She wouldn't have followed through if it wasn't for…

“Chat Noir.”

Tikki, who had fluttered over to an ANZAC biscuit and was ready to feast, looked up suddenly. “Marinette, is everything ok?”

Marinette took a rough swallow of air as she rolled onto her side. “Chat Noir. He was the one who really encouraged me to fight our first akuma. I didn't… trust him at the time, but he was so… so encouraging.”

“He never stopped being encouraging, either!” Tikki piped up, her voice every bit as bright and hopeful as the rush that enveloped Marinette every time she transformed. Tikki was the embodiment of the warmth that made Marinette long for a life of fighting crime.

“Yeah…” Marinette trailed off, the terseness and absence of her response alarming Tikki.

“Marinette, is everything okay?”

“He… He has my number.”

“I thought you had made up your mind to exchange them?”

“I made up my mind, and I did it… It’s just… was I right to do that? And if I was, was I right to wait so long before we did?”

“Marinette, there was a Ladybug and Chat Noir who didn't realize each other's identities until they relinquished their miraculous…”

“Really?”

“They were  _ married _ .” there was a comical air of irritation to her tone which suggested it was obvious to everyone but them.

In an instant, Marinette’s weariness dissipated, giggling at the uncharacteristic annoyance in Tikki's expression. She cupped her hands together and held them out, to which Tikki fluttered over and ate the remainder of her biscuit.

“Plagg and I hid in their dressings at their wedding.  Even when Chat Noir took his wedding band on one hand and the miraculous on his other, Ladybug never questioned it! But they had chemistry in and out of costume… they were one of the most interesting pairs that I can remember.”

“Were they your favorites?”

Marinette’s question was abrupt and pointed, leaving Tikki even more concerned than before. The kwami frowned and looked aside. “I try not to think of things in terms of favorites. True, there were a couple Ladybugs… and a couple Chat Noirs, where it wasn’t working out, to whom I never truly warmed. But to pick a favorite is to ignore what makes them all so different, and my favorite part of being a kwami, soul-searching, granting my powers, is seeing what makes a miraculous wearer different from the last.”

Marinette pondered this for a moment. “Soul-searching, but you don’t know how a Ladybug is going to turn out? Have there been disappointments?”

“Disappointment is such a loaded word. There have been some Ladybugs who haven’t lived up to the potential I felt in them, but I don’t feel like they let me down in any way-”

“Like me?”

Tikki looked up, stunned. She shook her head and flew over to Marinette’s face, nuzzling her cheek. “No. Never. I love how focused you are. It's been a while since I found a Ladybug who was so diligent in her duties. I'm thankful for that because it's actually rare for Ladybugs to have to do battle with other miraculous wearers…”

“You mean there hasn't always been a Hawk Moth? Uhm… sorry, that I keep interrupting you. I never expected to have this conversation.”

Tikki sighed and shook her head, “All the kwami are meant to do good, to aid a team of heroes in times of need. With that said, the other Kwami differ in how often their powers are granted. Nooroo, the kwami who gives Hawk Moth his powers, is meant to deputize non-miraculous holders with temporary powers. I think Hawk Moth is probably the rarest of any miraculous wearer. It's been a century since I saw one, which was during the first great war.”

“Oh my god,” Marinette exclaimed, trying for one to imagine a benevolent Hawk Moth, but more importantly the horrors of the first World War. But just as quickly as that thought popped into her head, she tried to shut it out, thinking to the decadence of the uniforms she had studied for a class project, late in  lycée. She tried to imagine a Ladybug, a Chat Noir, a Hawk Moth, and some of the others she had read and heard about over the years. “Uhm, I'm sorry to shift the subject to something so… inconsequential, but… what did the Miraculous-wearers look like? Maybe you remember my school project-”

Tikki looked on with a hopeful smile. “It's never too late to switch your field of study, Marinette.”

Marinette frowned guiltily, and once more avoided eye contact with her kwami. “I think… there’s a better chance of me remaining Ladybug the rest of my life than I have of breaking into fashion at this point-”

Tikki interjected with a sense of graveness, of urgency, “Don’t talk like that. You can’t resign yourself to failure like that. No, things haven’t gone to plan, but you will always,  _ always _ have opportunities to jump back into fashion like you dreamed-”

She was cut short by a vibration of Marinette’s phone, as both turned to look. Marinette, surprised that Tikki appeared as anxious as her, for what without doubt was Chat’s return text message, gestured to hold her thought, as she moved nervously over to her phone, observing a message from an unrecognized number:

**That was fast. I guess we’d stopped closer to your apartment than mine, huh? Made it home safe.**

Marinette felt a chilly rush as she recognized the message as Chat’s. It was so curiously formal, though maybe that was her expectation from mile-a-minute Alya, or her parents, who were not extremely tech-savvy. She gave a soft, thoughtful smile to the message, and looked up to Tikki, who seemed every bit as curious as she was. “I… I don’t want you to feel like I’m ignoring you, I, I just…”

“Go on and talk to him. Let me say that, the married Ladybug and Chat Noir aside, you’ve done a remarkable job with how long you’ve remained anonymous to one another.”

“Thanks, Tikki-” she smiled at her phone, typing out a message excitedly. She failed to catch the kwami’s mournful look, shaking her head as she flew over to her sleeping place, a silken red hobbit hole pillow Marinette had crafted in the summer prior to her final year of  lycée.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what else I need to apologize for? How angsty this fic got, and how quickly it reached that point- I might be setting myself up for chapters which alternate fluffy/happy with angsty/sad, but let me first explain another facet I'm looking to tackle with this AU: Depression. Specifically, Marinette coping with life in university which has not panned out as hopefully as the series is moving towards in canon. Good thing her new friend still works/lives in the fashion industry, right? Not that she knows that just yet ;)


End file.
